SOCIAL CLIMBER

摘要

The social condenser conjures images of Soviet Moscow, the crisp cuboid of the Narkomfin with snow thick on the ground, and bold illustrations of workers' clubs -a sports hall, library and cinema all assembled on top of one another. 'We need not merely new clubs', the Constructivist architect Ivan Leonidov wrote in 1928, 'but clubs - inventions, insofar as these are not clubs for playing whist and dancing the quadrille - designed for brand new, previously unheard-of human relations: new "social condensers" of our time.' Soviet Russia may feel a long way from subtropical Brazil, but the grand, Utopian ideal of different collective cultural programmes all piled into one building, almost entirely extinct in the post-Soviet states, has been quietly proliferating in Brazilian cities for the last 70 years. In 1946, SESC (Servico Social do Comercio) was founded in Rio de Janeiro by a group of private businesses, initially to provide healthcare to employees and their families but quickly expanding into other Brazilian states and diversifying into programmes such as theatres, gyms and holiday camps. A non-profit but private institution, SESC is funded by a 1.5 per cent tax on workers in commerce - specific services and activities are reserved for its paying members but the centres are free for everyone to enter.